Size 12 Is Not Fat – A Review

Meg Cabot was interesting and I am curious about how good she is knowing that Princess Diaries is popular and Cabot herself is well-known. But sometimes, your expectations does not equal the final result.

Heather Wells, a former teen pop sensation, working in a college Residence Hall in New York as an Assistant Director hoping she’d get to medical school, trying to move on with her break up with boy band member Jordan Cartwright and living just above Cooper Cartwright, fantasizing of ripping his shirt off with her teeth, and size 12.

Everything seems to be on the right track until girls in the Residence Hall die at the bottom of the elevator shaft in a very suspicious way. Police thinks it’s an accident while others think it’s because of elevator surfing. Heather thinks otherwise. She insists that girls don’t do elevator surfing and this girls just don’t fit into the personality of elevator surfers. Dragging Cooper, a private eye, and playing private eye herself, she investigates who the culprit could be. Will she be able to protect this girls or will she be protecting herself at the end?

“Size 12 Is Not Fat”: that title won’t certainly give you an idea that this book would be a mystery. You would expect a humorous book of a women’s struggle on size and weight or something on that line. But here, you get guesswork, clues, death, evidence, confrontations, and confessions. Heather was very easy to love. She is humorous and very curious. On the very first chapter, I knew that she’d be a character I’d like and so I did. Her imaginations and fantasies where Cooper is involved was a fun peek into what’s inside her brain whenever she sees Cooper. As this is a series, some parts are left bare so readers will buy the next installment. And so Cooper and Heather’s love story was hanging though I would bet that Cooper has his eye for Heather too! Just like any mystery novel, there are scenes where you get scared for the characters. Who knows someone might step in and do the ugly deed while they were walking in the hallway. When Heather found the real culprit at last, I was surprised, just like Cabot would want me to. How she found out and how the ending ended was indeed a real treat.

That though is not enough for me to give a full thumbs up for this book. For me, the way Cabot writes is too casual, too American. Not only that, the mystery gave only half of what a real mystery should feel. There wasn’t enough thrill, just talking, just compromise. There was no pull to me, a pull to buy the next book. There wasn’t enough something in the book that would make me itch to buy Size 14 Is Not Fat.

To me, Size 12 Is Not Fat, was like weather. At times good, at times not so much as good. I can’t call this bad though. There are just books that are not for me and I bet for others too. This book would fit into that category.